Thursday, December 18, 2008

Stick a Fork in Me

Yep - stick a fork in me...I'm done. My nice, good, normal class suddenly exploded yesterday into a bad episode of People's Court with a little circus freak show mixed in. The whole fifth grade watched a movie yesterday afternoon. I heart movie days - I can get a TON of work done whilst my children are staring glassy-eyed at the screen.

Or I can normally get a ton of work done.

The fun started right after lunch. B and E came to find me and tell me that M stole one of B's boots and put it in E's locker. Following me so far? This isn't the first little scuffle these three have had - E and M are "one-friend" girls, and they want their one friend to be B, who can't stand up to either of them. I pull M out in the hallway and ask her to tell me about the boots. "I didn't touch anything," she says, "I figured E took the boot, that's why I told B to look in her locker. They think I did it, but I didn't. I was with S all during lunch." So, I pull S out to check the alibi. S tells me, "Yup, M found the boot in the hallway and put it in E's locker on the way outside." Pull M back out and point out that if she wants to use someone as an alibi, she might want to get her story straight with that person first. Ask again if she took the boot, and she tearfully confesses, she was trying to get E in trouble so B would like her better. Yeesh.

As I'm on my way in to get a discipline write up for her to fill out, another student comes up and tells me that K is scraping snow off his shoes and pants and throwing it at her and her friends. Argh. I know he's guilty - the kid throws any little thing he can get his hands on...eraser bits, teeny paper balls, cookie crumbs, you name it. Anything small enough that he thinks he won't get caught. So I pull him in the hallway, where he insists, "It's not me, it's the two boys sitting behind me, that's why everyone thinks it's me."

So I go head back in the room to question the two boys and the ten other people sitting around them. I'm interrupted by my autistic child, J, shouting, "I'm bad, too! Take me in the hallway!" Having had a bad episode with his social worker, he somehow thinks being punished more can make up for it. He continues shouting until I'm forced to put him in the hallway so everyone else can hear the movie. As he's going to the hall, I hastily interview about fifteen other kids as to whether K was the one throwing snow. Shockingly, no one saw anyone except K throwing things.

In the hallway once more, I check M's discipline write up, where instead of writing what she did, she's written that she promises she won't be bad anymore. Tell her to write down exactly what she did, ask K who's telling the truth, him or the fifteen people who saw him throwing snow, all the while punctuated by J shouting "I DID IT! I THREW SNOW! I MASHED IT INTO PEOPLE'S FACES AND PUSHED THEM DOWN, AND HURT THEM, AND THEN I KICKED THEM! GIVE ME A YELLOW PAPER TO WRITE HOW I'M BAD!!!" K tells me that, yes, he might have thrown just a little bit of snow, but it started when someone else put snow down his back. As J shouts, "LOOK, I'M EATING TAPE!" I say to K, "Really, those girls across the room who you were hitting with snow were somehow able to put snow down your back from across the room?" He admits, they did not. I hand him the discipline writeup and a pencil, turning my attention back to J, who's still demanding a yellow paper to write how he's bad. Have him get his office pass and take a break by walking to the office and back, check M's write up, which now accurately lists her behavior, sign it, and send her down to the office to deliver it to the principal. Leave K sitting in the hall and head in to try to get a few papers graded.

J returns from his walk to the office, and all is calm. Until the assistant principal shows up to give me the detention form for M. J sees the paper, is reminded that he wanted one, and begins shouting, "I'M BAD! GIVE ME A PAPER! SEE, I'M CRUMPLING UP THE OFFICE PASS! I'M RIPPING IT! I NEED A YELLOW PAPER!" I take him back out to the hall for the duration, check K's write up, where he has somehow forgotten to include the little fact that he flat out lied to me. "Oh, yeah," he says, "I forgot about that." Sure.

Write ups complete....J quietly sitting in the hallway....me alternating between praying that my mental stability will last until Christmas break and asking God to please send us a snow day. Done.